Fraud-funding (update)

This is a update to my previous post about incident of fraudulent donations coming for production of Pepper&Carrot Motion Comic.

After publishing the post I have examined other transactions made in July and found that all of them look very similar to those identified as fraudulent. That made me feel not comfortable – I really do not like the idea of funding any of my projects from stolen money.

I’ve had a hard thinking on this situation. I didn’t wanted fraudulent money, and luckily there is possibility to issue a refund for any transaction through Gumroad’s dashboard. That way fraud victims will get their money back. On the other hand there could be a legit transactions there, as I was not 100% sure they all fraudulent.

Finally, I came up to the following solution: I decided to refund all July transactions and then post email update to all July customers explaining the situation and suggesting to support the production of new episode through our page at OpenCollective. That way all fraud victims will get their money back and if there are legit donors, then they will know how to contribute.

Before doing this, I thought it would be good to contact Gumroad’s head Sahil Lavingia. I have explained my situation and my plan how to deal with it. I have pointed out that this will result in increased debt in my account and I will cover it as soon as I have that opportunity, but that will take some time. He responded that that’s okay and good to go.

Then I got forwarded to Gumroad’s support, they run additional check on all transactions and confirmed that all July transactions as fraudulent. They were refunded immediately.

At this moment I have a negative balance at Gumroad account (a bit more than $500 debt), which I eventually had to cover But in any case this feels much better, than using stolen money in my production.

The donations coming through a dedicated page at OpenCollective will go for covering this debt – I have put a milestone notice in page description. Also I have made a calculations and indicated a second goal, which will allow us to continue production of Pepper&Carrot Episode 3.

Your donations are appreciated more than ever now! ^__^

P.S. After my previous post some people contributed to help cover my debt – they purchased “Pepper&Carrot Motion Comic” product via Gumroad. I appreciate that so much! \o/ Still, I encourage to contribute via this OpenCollective page, because this will make the process transparent – it is clearly visible the amount collected and how much remaining. Thank you!